Selling Condos? It’s Child’s Play

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO The New York Times

THE McDonald’s Happy Meal, which upended fast-food dining when it was first rolled out nationally in 1979, was a brilliantly simple concept: add a toy with some marketing tie-in to a colorful box with a burger, fries, a soft drink and cookies, and make children harass their parents until they steered for the double arches.

“My feeling was if you get the children to think about McDonald’s, Mom would bring them there,” Bob Bernstein, the advertising executive who invented the Happy Meal, said in a 2004 interview.

That marketing strategy now seems to be taking root in high-end Manhattan real estate.

Consider the Aldyn, a luxury condominium building at 60 Riverside Boulevard in Manhattan. It has 40,000 square feet of amenity space, including a full-size basketball court, a two-lane bowling alley, a golf simulator, a gym, a billiards table, a Ping-Pong table and a sort of community cafe. Oh, and there’s a two-floor rock-climbing wall.